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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2010 8:48:42 GMT
That was a fabulous tale, gertie. I think we all recognized bits and pieces of our own early days of cooking. Thank god that students can eat just about anything!
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Post by joanne28 on Mar 31, 2010 16:24:34 GMT
My dad was Québecois and my mother English Canadian. So it made for a interesting combination.
On the English Canadian side all meat had to be very well done. Spices and onions and so on were eyed with suspicion. My maternal grandmother did make something we called corn fritters. She mixed up the batter which was flour, egg, kernel corn & whatever else. This batter was baked in the roast drippings. It didn't rise like Yorkshire puddings though. The entire roasting pan would be one giant corn fritter and I distinctly remember the very dark brown crust on the bottom. I think this is where I developed my love for all things corn.
The vegetables were boiled and for a long time. I remember cauliflower and carrot rounds but not broccoli. No green salads. A dessert my sister and I still indulge in for nostalgic reasons - a bowl lined with pineapple pieces, a layer of red Jell-o, a layer of vanilla ice cream, a layer of red Jell-o and a last layer of vanilla ice cream. Not exciting or adventuresome but it brings Grandmother back to us.
She also made a spaghetti sauce I loved although I think I would find it rather bland today.
My dad's mother, Grandmaman, made all the traditional Québecois dishes - tourtière, ragoût de pattes de cochon avec boulettes, roti de porc avec patates jaune. Pork is my favourite meat, largely due to these dishes. Her rice pudding was made with lots of raisins, spiced with plenty of nutmeg (no cinnamon, thank you very much) and then cooked in a bain marie (the dish was put in a large pan with water and then baked - don't know the English term). Since she used lots of eggs & milk, these would rise to the top in cooking and form a custard.
There was her pâté chinois, which is essentially shepherd's pie, except we used cream corn instead of carrots & peas & gravy. Another reason I love corn, I think. I make that to this day - it is a real comfort food for me. Homemade baked beans with maple syrup and/or molasses. Boudin cooked with pure pork sausages.
There are certain things which are distinctly Québecois. I find nutmeg is used a lot more than cinnamon. I would never put cinnamon in apple pie or applesauce. It doesn't taste right because it's not what I grew up with. Even English Quebeckers do the same. Of course, the corn in shepherd's pie is another quirky difference.
My father always had to have a green salad with dinner every night. He was far more adventurous in his eating than my mother. He would try anything and everything. When he was around 50, he changed careers. He had been a mechanic on hydraulic pumps for years but took a cooking course and became an accredited chef. He then got the job of kitchen manager up north when they were building the James Bay hydro plants.
I gradually started expanding my culinary horizons in my late teens and early twenties. I'm not a very daring eater but I have added new dishes as I've gone along. I'm now a huge fan of Indian food. Thai is okay, I like northern Italian.
I do have a preference for starchy food. I love all things rice, potato and pasta, which is probably due to my upbringing.
I'm hungry now.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2010 17:05:34 GMT
That's a lovely story, Joanne. Actually, I have heard mechanic-to-chef stories before, and I think it may have to do with a love of precision and everything "working properly" when you have finished your job. The two careers are not nearly as far apart as some people might think.
I feel some stories about my grandmother's meals coming up soon... I hope I don't bore you.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2010 18:40:19 GMT
This is so interesting and so very different, Joanne. I need to ask a question about the corn, first off. Was the heavy use of corn because lots of it got home-canned during the season? Also, is corn used that extensively throughout parts of Canada, or was it simply a special favorite in your family? I find it intriguing that your Québecois grandmother also incorporated corn into her cooking. *About the soft vegetables -- I think many of us who grew up in the fifties and early to mid-sixties ate very-cooked vegetables during the first parts of our lives. And even though steamed crisp vegetables are now the norm, it would be a shame to forget about green beans smothered with onions and bacon, I feel. The jello dessert sounds yummy. My grandmother was a great baker, but she also made a jello dessert with canned fruit cocktail and (real) whipped cream. Did your family ever have the "elegant" 50s salads -- a lettuce leaf topped with a canned pear half adorned with a spoonful of maynnaise and grated cheddar. I was always thrilled to see that on the table (so fancy!) and begged to be allowed to use the little rotary grater to put the cheese on. The note about nutmeg is surprising and pleasing. I love nutmeg, but wind up mostly using cinnamon in stuff where it "belongs". Now I feel I can follow my heart in nutmeg usage -- thanks! Do you think your dad's liking for salads and adventurous eating was because of the wider repertoire of foods he enjoyed as a child? How wonderful that he followed his dream at an age where a less adventurous person would have decided was "too old". You say you're not a very daring eater, but I'd say learning to like and to cook something as exotic as Indian food is quite daring. I so much enjoyed reading about your roots -- thanks! * You may be pleased to learn that corn has its own little section in AnyPort's Recipe References thread.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2010 19:04:18 GMT
My French grandmother absolutely loved corn ("cattle feed" to the French at the time). I'm sure that she would absolutely never have served it in France (assuming that it had been available at the time) for fear of being expelled from the village or thrown out of the house by my grandfather, but boy did she eat her fill every time she came to the United States!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2010 19:06:18 GMT
... much to my mother's despair, I must add. My mother holds 'traditional' French views about corn and practically put a clothespin on her nose when she would serve it to us kids.
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Post by joanne28 on Mar 31, 2010 19:45:36 GMT
Bixa, I have always thought of corn as a Québec thing, but I'm sure someone who grew up elsewhere can let us know. I don't know about the home canning either. Neither of my grandmothers canned corn. My French grandmother would make her own green tomato ketchup for tourtière and jams of course. Here's the perfect pic of pâté chinois! www.chateauramezay.qc.ca/eng/expo/atable.htmAbout vegetable dishes, anyone remember canned green beans in a casserole with water chestnuts, French's fried onion rings, all lovingly enveloped in cream of mushroom soup & baked? I think my father was always an adventurous soul. He was in the merchant marines, worked on the DEWline in the early fifties, became a painter and ending up living on a boat in Guatemala. He wasn't necessarily the best of fathers and he certainly wasn't a conventional one. When I was young, I wanted him to behave like everyone else's dad. Now that I am older, I admire and respect his following his dream. I will go & rummage through corn recipes now. ;D
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2010 21:01:10 GMT
Trust me when I tell you that for the past six-plus decades, not once did I ever think "Québec/corn". In fact, if someone had asked me to guess if corn was consumed in French Canada, I would have said no. Any idea why pâté chinois is called "Chinese"?
The water chestnuts in the famous green bean casserole are an upscale touch! I remember them with canned or bottled mushrooms.
When we lived in Spain, we still had access to American foods because of the AF Base commissary. And just because we were living in a foreign country didn't mean we lost our love for corn on the cob. One of the ladies who worked for us took my mother aside once and asked, "Señora -- you all are not poor. Why are you giving your children food for cattle?"
Joanne, the pâté chinois picture on that site looks temping. About the beaver meat during Lent -- I've read about that before. It's a nice bit of expediency. I think the part allowed was the tail, the logic being that the tail spent most of its time in the water, like a fish.
Your dad sounds super interesting, fired with the curiosity and restlessness that can be a blessing or curse for intelligent, talented people.
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Post by cristina on Apr 1, 2010 3:08:10 GMT
I'm intrigued by the nutmeg vs. cinnamon experience. I read somewhere recently that the French do not use cinnamon to the degree that that American palate is accustomed to, so its fascinating to me that this transferred to Quebec.
I like both nutmeg and cinnamon and they are both among my my most used seasonings (after garlic...although frequently with).
The corn stories are fun to read too. I identify corn as a very southern US food (even though I know it is eaten across the country). I miss the really good, sweet corn on the cob that we got from local(ish) farmers as a child.
And Joanne, its really nice that you can appreciate and admire your Dad now, as someone who was more than just your Dad, but a whole person.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 1, 2010 3:32:17 GMT
As for corn (maize) do remember that it is an Indigenous food here - we are about the northern limit, peoples farther north were basically hunters and gatherers and couldn't really cultivate anything, but the peoples of what is now southern Québec did grow the three sisters. Corn is not used to the extent it is in the "corn-fed" US south and midwest, but it is logical that it should exist in our cuisine more than in la mère patrie.
Cinnamon in everthing does seem very "English-speaking North American" to me. I much prefer nutmeg.
I do like corn, but its overuse does seem to have contributed to health problems. (And of course in the Italian side of my family, polenta yes perhaps, but not cobs of corn, that is food for beasts). I hate pâté chinois. It always seemed like poverty food to me, and I was astonished that people would feed it to me as a guest. I was polite, but just ... nonplussed. These people were feeding me wine, and salad, and nice bread and cheese, but this ... stuff we'd only eat when destitute. Microhabits, I guess.
bixa, in the old world, duck was also considered a "fish" for lent.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2010 7:47:26 GMT
Cinnamon is indeed used very little in France. I have noticed that most people do not even recognize the taste of it when I have brought back or made something with a lot of cinnamon in it. Probably the principal use of it is in couscous, but since most people buy 'couscous spice' in a premixed jar, they don't even know the exact ingredients in there.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2010 11:08:08 GMT
I find the corn discussion very fascinating. Where I grew up on Long Island, acres of sweet corn were grown to sell commercially for immediate consumption,and then, there was corn grown specifically for "hog feed". To this day,I have a vivid memory of my father at the dinner table one night,furious with my mother for trying to pawn off what he knew to be sweet corn on the cob that was more than 24 hours from being picked,angrily referring to it as "hog feed". (The corn does turn to starch within 24 hours after being harvested). I worked on a few roadside farmstands,and, at the end of the day, whatever sweet corn that was harvested that morning, was given away or sold to the local restaurants at dirt cheap prices. No farmer wanted the reputation of selling sweet corn that was more than 24 hours old. Actually,it's real easy to detect from the husks,they take on a wilted,withered look. All the other leftover corn was taken off the cob and put up in jars,or made into succotash. I realize that this may come off as food snobbery,but,as a child growing up in a farm community,it is all I knew. To this day,I cannot bring myself to buy corn on the cob from the grocery,particularly when I see it already shucked and wrapped in cellophane on a styrofoam plate. And,god forbid,that stuff they sell at festivals etc. sitting under lights,all wrinkled and buttered and salted already....
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Post by joanne28 on Apr 1, 2010 13:55:41 GMT
Lagatta, pâté chinois probably did start as a method to use up leftovers. I like it but it's a comfort food to me. I wouldn't serve it at a dinner party though.
Bixa, absolutely no clue where the Chinese came from. Anyone else have ideas?
Meatloaf is a food I only encountered in my adulthood. I never ate it in childhood. Neither of my grandmothers or mother ever made it.
Oh, and I screwed up on my description of the Jell-o dessert (quelle surprise!). It's one layer of red and one layer of green. My sister & I always think of it as a Christmas dessert.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 1, 2010 14:03:19 GMT
There are various theories about the "chinois" - it could simply refer to the yellow corn in less "politically-correct" times.
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 1, 2010 19:39:05 GMT
i've just spent ages re-reading this thread. I took peeks in the last few days, but they had left me hungry for a good read. Thank you, all for fab, really interesting personal stories!
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 1, 2010 21:56:58 GMT
That inspires me to go back and re-read too, Annie. Each person who contributed to the thread interacted with everyone else, making it into a real chorus. There are so many surprising and interesting stories here, and everyone has been so good about answering questions.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2010 8:58:03 GMT
My grandmother was the mayor’s wife. This is not a big deal in a village of 1000 people. Like most rural mayors in France, my grandfather wasn’t even affiliated with any political party. He was just a retired railroad stationmaster who had somehow attained a little more status than some of the other villagers.
Anyway, my grandmother’s kitchen was as much a municipal office as the official office in the small town hall. From the moment she got up in the morning, she would start preparing the various meals of the day. She would put on the big pot of coffee and sometimes start peeling the potatoes for lunch before anybody had even had breakfast. The potatoes would sit in a small plastic basin full of water to prevent oxidation. They would be lovingly dried off one by one with a kitchen towel when it was time to cut them up – either into french fries, cubes for roasting or bigger pieces for boiling. She would be listening for the tooting of the bakery truck, especially if she needed to buy some pastry (rarely since she made most things herself) or some extra bread in the case of visitors. When there was nobody home for some reason, the baker knew to automatically leave two big baguettes on the kitchen window sill. We would have breakfast. My grandfather would finish faster than the rest of us because he needed to feed the rabbits and perhaps have the pleasure of a morning pee in the dew of the back pasture. Before long he would leave for the mairie for a couple of hours. He was screwing his secretary.
My grandmother would be preparing mirabelle or questch tarts, or shucking peas, or maybe plucking some pigeons – she never stopped preparing meals, but somehow she would also clean house, do some gardening and serve coffee to the many visitors, who knew that they could count on a slice of brioche, too. My brother and I weren’t good for much in the year we spent there. I have to really admire my grandparents for taking on the burden of the turbulence and all of the extra work they had – my grandmother was already 66 years old and my grandfather was more than 70.
By 11 a.m., the kitchen was smelling like lunch – butter and garlic were often the primary aromas, but roasting meat was also common, as well as the more delicate smell of the fresh tarragon or basil on the salad sitting in the bowl waiting to be tossed at just the right time. My grandfather would show up, and then all of a sudden there would be new visitors who needed to get him to stamp a document or sign a paper. Nobody was duped by these visits, because anybody who came between 11 and noon was automatically offered apéritif and took full advantage of the offer while unconvincingly trying to decline. The Ricard and the Martini bottles would come out, with extras fetched from the cellar if needed.
Everybody kept an eye on my grandmother and how the food preparation was advancing. She would keep busy the entire time, but would sit on the edge of a chair every couple minutes and sip a tiny bit of vermouth to show that she was a proper hostess. Once the potatoes plunged into the french fryer or the chicken came out of the oven, the “guests” would know that it was time to scatter like cockroaches when you turn on the light. No matter how much was left in their glass, they would finish in one gulp and be out the door…
But that’s just the beginning of the story.
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Post by spindrift on Apr 8, 2010 11:40:18 GMT
Wonderful reading , so evocative...and it plunged me straight into the kitchen scene; I could see her there perching on the edge of her chair sipping the vermouth....
I plan to spend a week in Ireland soon and I'll question my Irish cousins about Irish culinary roots for, as you know, I don't believe we have any at all.
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 8, 2010 12:30:37 GMT
lovely reading you, K2!
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Post by joanne28 on Apr 9, 2010 19:45:05 GMT
I love grandparents stories. I'm looking forward to the next installment.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 10, 2010 19:41:18 GMT
Everybody kept an eye on my grandmother and how the food preparation was advancing. She would keep busy the entire time, but would sit on the edge of a chair every couple minutes and sip a tiny bit of vermouth to show that she was a proper hostess. Once the potatoes plunged into the french fryer or the chicken came out of the oven, the “guests” would know that it was time to scatter like cockroaches when you turn on the light. No matter how much was left in their glass, they would finish in one gulp and be out the door… At least they didn't demand to be fed, too! I thought sure that was where this story was going.
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Post by gertie on Apr 11, 2010 4:22:42 GMT
kimby, I thought so, too!
K2, your grandmother reminds me a lot of mine. She started her mornings early as my grandfather had to be breakfasted and out the door early. Each morning she fixed him a hot breakfast, then ran a bucket of scrub water with that old-fashioned Lysol in the brown bottle. The downstairs bath, kitchen, and hallway were all tile and it was scrubbed each morn on her hands and knees before she called all the kids to wake. Next, a hot breakfast for everyone and we were turned out to school or to work and play in the yards.
Every year my grandfather tilled up the same large patch and a garden was planted in the "small patch out back", to the tune of 15-20 tomato plants, half a dozen bell peppers, five mounds each yellow summer squash (they seem to prefer calling it crook necked squash now for some reason?), watermelon, and cantaloupe. Next 8-10 mounds of pickle plants (they were cucumbers, but as their destination was pickles the family referred to them as pickle plants). Finally a row each of red and white radish, onions for green onions, banana peppers, and carrots, and three or four rows of green beans. It was the job of we kids to keep it hoed, weeded, watered, and properly picked.
A guilty pleasure of my childhood was to pull young carrots and eat them after a swift wash under the hose. Grandma also grew leaf lettuce as an edge around all her flower gardens in the house yard, and it was quite pretty until we kids would get a little over-zealous clipping.
By noon she would have swept and mopped the back covered porch and rows of laundry would be dried on the lines in the sun and ready to come in. We kids were put to work helping take the laundry in and the smell of warm sun-dried sheets always takes me back to those days. We kids were carefully monitored as we first rinsed all the collected produce in water from the hose in an old wash basin, then our hands and finally our feet before we were allowed into the inner sanctum...the kitchen. Wonderful smells would by this time be coming from the stove. I think my grandmother cooked everything, I remember her snorting at the very idea of a meat product being fully cooked and ready to eat from the package. Even lunch meat was carefully fried on both sides before coming to rest on a sandwich!
Oh, but the wonderful lunches! My grandmother was said to put out quite a spread. We kids were pressed into service to set the table and place the various platters. Even a "simple meal" of sandwiches required a hot side, along with dessert. The afternoon would usually find us kids again pressed into service snapping beans or perhaps shelling peas while my great-grandmother told stories and worked over her own batch. Then the scurry to can up a batch and still get dinner on the table by the time my grandfather got home so he could eat before heading off to his second job.
Dinner of course had to include a roasted or skillet-fried hot meat dish, potatoes, green vegetable, other vegetable, pickles, homemade jams, green onions and radishes, fresh bread, and a dessert at the very least. Usually after my grandfather headed off to work, Grammy would remain yet in the kitchen, baking pies, cookies, whatever was intended for the next day's dessert. I don't recall my grandmother sitting all that much, but when she did do so, her hands were always busy crocheting.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2010 14:12:14 GMT
Sunday lunch was the grand spectacular at my grandparents’ house. There were nearly always some guests, and it was the only day that the dining room was used for eating instead of the kitchen. With the central table extensions, there could be 8 or 10 people, and one of the first things of the morning was to go and fix the table for the necessary configuration, open the shutters, run the dust rag over all of the surfaces, particularly the Henri II buffet – a popular style in the early 20th century. A heavy linen tablecloth would go over the table, and the fine china would be brought out, along with the etched crystal stemware. The full set of silverware would be placed as well – I would help and I was very proud to know exactly where the items went, including such things as snail forks when appropriate. Well, maybe I made a mistake from time to time, but it was always set right in the end.
Depending on the season, lilac, gladioli, roses or dahlias would be picked in the garden and put into a big vase for the center of the table. The vase would not remain in place very long when the guests arrived, because their line of sight could not be blocked for the animated discussions about local politics, scabrous gossip (like the local priest's bastards, or the woman who had moved in with Marie-Rose) or the latest news from the mines or the steel mills. I don’t remember national or world politics ever being discussed in those days, because villagers back then had no interest in anything that was happening more than 30 kilometers from home. Anyway, as soon as the table was ready, the dining room would be closed again so that it would not fill with the cooking aromas that would soon invade the rest of the house.
Who would be coming to lunch? Sometimes there were some family members – my grandfather’s sister Nini lived next door with her husband Marcel. My grandmother’s sister Lucienne might be visiting from Paris, generally without her husband Emile, because he was an old stick-in-the-mud who preferred to stay in Bécon-les-Bruyères. Or there could be my grandmother’s brother René (the only divorced person in the family who raised his 3 daughters all by himself) or her sister Jeanne, with the inevitable Georges. Georges was my mother’s favorite uncle for reasons that I could not fathom, but such choices are always personal and don’t need to be justified. Georges had been a prisoner of war and had lost about 25 kgs that he never gained back, so he was a little skeleton of a man.
To complete the table, my grandfather usually had a waiting list of village “notables” who drooled at the thought of being invited to my grandmother’s legendary table of wonders, so one or two of them might snag a seat. There were also some second stringers who might be told to drop by as we approached dessert around 3:30 or 4:00 – they would mostly be coming for coffee and unlimited refills of mirabelle or quetsch that my grandfather made himself. Some of the ladies would just have a Marie Brizard, because the other stuff burned too much.
It was exciting to work under my grandmother’s orders in the kitchen – running down to the cellar to bring up potatoes or big canning jars of green beans or peas if they were not yet in season in the garden. Or there would be things to get in the garden – sprigs of tarragon growing on a bush against the sunny garage wall, parsley back by the red currant bushes. As a teenager, I could even be trusted to harvest some carrots or radishes, or even to cut some asparagus out of their mounds, but I am talking about my little boy days at the moment – minor tasks for pint-sized kids.
Back in the kitchen, sometimes I would be put on parsley chopping detail, using the shiny wheely device to chop it as finely as possible. Or I might be chopping the garlic or told to keep a close eye on a simmering sauce while my grandmother went out to select some heads of lettuce or pick some tomatoes. One of the most fantastic things about the summery version of these meals is that the vegetables were so incredibly fresh, having been picked sometimes only 30 minutes before they were served.
I will try to describe an actual meal one of these days.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 12, 2010 14:27:07 GMT
(with photographs? she said hopefully....)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2010 14:47:43 GMT
I am hoping to find at least some photos of the dining room, but there won't be any of the food. We're talking about the days when even Kodakchrome was considered expensive.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 13, 2010 3:39:24 GMT
Yes, back then families only took photos of "events", a mariage, perhaps Christmas, a new baby. Certainly not of a family meal. There were sometimes photos when families went to the beach, but that was a event as well.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 20, 2010 16:46:19 GMT
OK. My inherited influences are in no particular order: Sunset/California, Rombauer, old fashioned Escoffiesque French, A&W and staid middle American meat and potatoes fare. I've since embraced the Tuscan philosophy- get some good stuff at the market and get it from the kitchen to the table with minimal fuss and without f***ing it up. That's a great summing up of good American cooking before the "gourmet cooking" movement took off in the 60s and 70s, Fumobici. It was in California that I first began learning to cook. Sunset magazine showed me that there was an entire American cooking culture to be mined. Sunset is issuing a new, thousand-recipe cookbook, covered in this article, which says in part: “It was California cooking before chefs got ahold of it,” said John Carroll, a West Coast food writer.
There to chronicle it — and help create it — was Sunset magazine, the stalwart regional publication that Southern Pacific Railroad executives began in 1898 to lure Easterners to the untamed West. ...
Collectively, [the recipes] summon a way of life that flourished in the postwar boom, when Sunset was a coffee-table staple. In those years the magazine articulated for aspirational newcomers the relaxed, open way people on the West Coast gardened, traveled and ate.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2010 17:09:25 GMT
I remember Sunset -- my parents subscribed to it when we lived in Oxnard because it seemed to be a visa to California culture, with which we were somewhat unfamiliar.
Seeing this thread again brought to mind how big regional differences can be in the same country. The other day I was explaining to some colleagues the basic outline of marinating veal in white wine for a hot pâté en croûte, one of my grandmother's specialties. But it is pretty much the same marinade as in the similar ("but different") Alsatian baeckeoffe which mixes various meats.
Anyway, when I said that "next you put in bay leaves and cloves," both of them instantly said "you people from Lorraine always put cloves in your marinades!" and they did not say it in a nice way.
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Post by tod2 on Oct 22, 2010 14:12:57 GMT
Oh I am really looking forward to hearing the presentation of the lunch - who was told to sit where and who got the choice pieces and how your ears burned at the 'details' of the conversation! I remember supper every evening when we stayed with my grandmother - I always wondered why she was quite voluptuous but never seemed to eat anything at table!
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Post by mich64 on Jul 31, 2011 18:55:30 GMT
Bixa kindly directed me to this thread when I asked if Imec was a Professional Chef and I am so glad she did! So many delightful accounts of how members wrote of their childhood memories of their grandparents forming the basis of the their likes and dislikes and cooking techniques. I also learnt of how Imec became the Chef he is today.
Kerouac, your accounts are so comparable to those of my husband's upbringing including the one common room, the constant of his mother and aunt remaining in their kitchen from early morning to night constantly offering family and visitors food and drink depending on the time of day someone walked in the door. The account of the rabbits are the same for him as well. His uncle also had a huge garden and sold what they did not use to vendors in town.
On our last visit we stayed with my mother-in-laws first cousin, Denise. She could not have done more for us during our visit. She would be up early in the morning first walking to the bakery for our croissants and baguettes for breakfast. Denise had all the meals planned in advance of our visit and with the help of her friends oven upstairs she would prepare lunch. While eating lunch we would watch her prepare our evening meal. She was an amazing hostess. She was horrified when we insisted that we wash and dry her dishes each day and bring in her laundry and fold it, but we insisted. Her potatoe and zuchinni casserole was one of my favourite meals.
At my husbands uncle's home the coffee pot was not always on but a thermos full was always there as back up for the many visitors that stopped by when we came to visit. My husbands cousins made fun of my him when the kirsch was served and he would gag and try to keep up with them, but he could always drink more Kronenburg than they could.
We are so fortunate to have so many memories of our travels thus far and we cherish them all, but those spent with his family in the Lorraine are favorites to both of us and have formed the basis of how we prepare our food and entertain. Cheers, Mich
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